“What?”
“Never mind. We agree.”
A doctor pushed by her with a man in a security uniform, as they entered the bank robber’s small area.
“This man wasn’t allowing me to stitch his leg,” the doctor said. “He needs to be restrained, or I will have to sedate him.” The doctor stopped and looked at the patient. “I don’t want to have someone forcibly hold you down after what you’ve been through, and the police asked me not to sedate you as they want a statement when I’m done. So, will you allow me to finish?”
The bank robber looked from the security guard to Rebecca and then to the doctor. He nodded. “Go ahead. Get it done, so I can give my statement and go home.”
Rebecca stepped back and nodded at him, moving her fingers across her lips in a “
mum’s the word”
gesture.
Then she disappeared around the corner.
On the first floor, she found two police officers having coffee.
“Are you two waiting for the man from the bank robbery?”
The one with the seventies mustache looked up at her. “Why would that matter to you?”
“I was there.”
He looked at his partner and then back up to Rebecca. “You were there?” His voice was laced with suspicion.
“Yes. I saw that woman shot in the head by the man lying in the bed upstairs with a bullet wound to the leg.”
The cop looked her up and down. He set his coffee on the table and stood up, making Rebecca stand back a step. His partner stood up too, discarding his coffee also.
“Is that right? What else can you tell us?”
The cop was on the defensive. She could tell by his body language. He was ready to pounce and she had no idea why.
“I was waiting in line and it was taking too long,” she started, knowing she couldn’t add anything remotely close to the truth. There was no way they’d believe her. “I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and headed outside just as the two robbers entered the building. I was lucky enough to get out when I did. I heard something going on inside the bank and turned in time to see a man shoot a girl in the head. Then he saw me watching him, and shot through the window at me. I fell to the snow and then got up and got away. I came here because my husband was in a car accident.”
The cop crossed his arms. “There’s a few things that are confusing me.”
Rebecca frowned and stammered, “What’s that?”
“First, you say you couldn’t wait that long. The girl who was killed was the only one in line, according to the teller. You say there were two robbers. We only have one dead robber still at the bank. A witness a block down said he saw a woman matching your description jumping some kind of fence and running down another street away from the bank. The guy upstairs says there was another robber. He said it was a woman. She has the same hair and coat you’re wearing. Can you explain that?”
While he was talking, his partner had placed his hand on the butt of his sidearm.
“What are you saying? Are you saying I’m involved somehow? That’s ridiculous. I ran for my life. That guy upstairs shot at me. I almost died. My husband saved my life.” Her exasperation was showing. She couldn’t help it.
“Your husband saved your life? How could he do that? You said he was here after having a car accident.”
The cop’s arms unlocked. He stepped forward.
“Wait, you’re not listening. You don’t understand… no, wait.”
The partner had stepped behind her and pulled both her hands behind her back. In a flash, cuffs were slapped on.
“Wait, this is wrong.”
“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney—”
“Wait!” she shouted. “I didn’t do anything.” She stopped when she saw Mark. He was standing ten feet behind them. He smiled.
Rebecca felt the cop follow her gaze. She was sure he saw nothing because he looked back at her with confusion written on his face.
Mark motioned for her to bend over. She frowned. He motioned again, but this time he showed her, bending at the waist. When he stood up, he raised three fingers. Slowly, he lowered the first. Then he lowered the second.
The cops moved her. They said something about taking her downtown to tell her story. She caught a glimpse of Mark dropping his third finger.
Rebecca ducked with everything she had, bucking hard.
A gunshot rang out. The cop to her right dropped to the ground, blood leaving his head wound as fast as a fountain.
A siren sounded throughout the hospital.
Another gunshot and the other officer dropped just as fast, blood oozing from his left cheekbone where a bullet hole ruined his staunch features.
“I knew you’d tell the first cops you encountered.”
Rebecca looked up and saw the robber limping along with the use of a crutch. A large white bandage was wrapped around his thigh, his pant legs cut to just above the wound.
“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
Rebecca edged closer to the police officer lying dead beside her. She needed to get to his gun “What did you do to my husband?”
“He’s dead. Are you fucking stupid? I couldn’t walk away with you two knowing my secret. The stakes are higher now. I’ll still walk away, but the death toll will be higher. Although that’s not my fault. It’s yours.”
He lifted his weapon. The hospital alarm blared. Rebecca eased the last few inches over and felt the cop’s holster. She wrapped her hand around the gun and got ready to pull it out.
“Wait, don’t shoot. I can explain,” she said.
He slowed, looked at her with an expression on his face that said,
are you crazy?
“How could you
explain
? Explain what? You die. I disappear. I’m free. That’s all there is. No explanation.”
Her index finger felt for the safety and flipped it off. She rolled a little to pull the weapon out and then gauged where he was, so when she flipped onto her stomach, her cuffed hands would have a fighting chance at aiming correctly. She had no idea where this side of her came from. She knew about safeties on weapons from TV. She had seen a woman die today. The man before her said her husband was dead. She knew
she
would be dead any second and yet her mind was clear, organized.
The bank robber stepped up and stood six feet from her, his weapon aimed at a forty-five degree angle toward her face.
The hospital siren wailed on. A nurse entered the area where they were and screamed. She ran back through the door she had just come through.
Rebecca took a second to pray and then flipped onto her stomach.
The bank robber’s gun fired first.
Her finger began squeezing the trigger as soon as she turned. After two pulls, the finger continued, but only as a reflex as her body went into a seizure.
The bank robber’s bullet had entered the back of her head.
#
Her eyes opened.
She tried to get up, but was restrained by the pain. The last thoughts she’d had came back to her.
A metal stand was beside her, pumping something into her arm. Some kind of cloth covered her neck and head. Feeling around with her free hand, she discovered bandages.
A machine beeped beside her, increasing in tempo with her heartbeat.
A door opened. She tried to look toward it, but more pain welcomed that thought.
“You’re awake.”
The doctor who had attended the bank robber stood over her, looking down with a silly smile under his thick glasses.
“What happened?” she asked, her mouth feeling as arid as sand.
The doctor turned away and came back with a glass of water, a bendable straw sticking out of it. She drank greedily until he pulled it away.
“Lots happened. You were shot by the guy who shot and killed two police officers.”
“What happened to him?” Rebecca asked, her stomach turning as it all came back to her.
“He’s dead now. He didn’t make it out of the parking lot. The investigation took weeks, but they pieced it all together. I was told that you were at the bank and we told the police what your husband said about calling you. They haven’t figured that part out yet, but at least they now know you weren’t part of it.” He stopped, looked down at her and raised one thumb. “That was some crazy gun use you did. Shot the robber in the stomach, dead center. He stumbled out of the hospital and collapsed in the parking lot where he died under a hail of gunfire. They found a memory stick on him with the schematics of the police station on it. It was in all the papers all the way down to Toronto. This guy was planning on attacking the police station while someone else would rob the bank. The attack on the police station was meant to draw attention away from the bank robbery. Without you, it would’ve happened. They’re calling you a hero.”
It was so much to take in. She was happy he was gone, but she needed to know about Mark.
“What happened to my husband?”
He looked away. “I’m sorry. You’ve been out for almost a month now. Your head wound was severe. We were worried you would wake up and not remember anything, or not wake at all.”
“My husband,” Rebecca cut him off.
“He died. The bank job guy strangled him in his bed after you went downstairs.”
Rebecca cried. After a moment the doctor stepped away. Then she heard the door open and close.
She cried, because even in death he’d came for her. She wept, because he’d saved her life again, and because - wounded in a coma - they’d enjoyed a month together.
Rebecca whispered a goodbye to Mark and said, “I’ll see you in my dreams.”
The Newspaper
I can’t believe I’m sitting here, waiting for someone I don’t know, staking out an accident scene that hasn’t happened yet. I’m hoping to save the lives of the people that are meant to be killed. I’m pretty sure it will happen. Strange, I know, but I have to wait this out; my conscience won’t let me leave.
It all started yesterday morning when I woke up. I made coffee, opened the blinds to let the sun in, and went to the front door. I collected my newspaper from the welcome mat and pulled it from its protective plastic bag. I settled in the living room, and began to browse the paper while sipping my morning medicine.
Nothing unusual. All the same bad news, but hey, I’m addicted to the news. An item that made the second page caught my attention - it was about a woman and her three teenage daughters who had been killed by a large truck in the parking lot of the hotel where the psychic fair was being held.
It caught my eye because of the irony. I mean, didn’t they see it coming? I’m not trying to belittle the fact that these people died. It’s just, that was my first thought, as morbid as it was. I went on to finish the paper, and my coffee, without any more derogatory thoughts about the senseless violence and general meanness of society - although I did have a few select words in mind when I saw my local hockey team had lost another game.
The rest of my day went without incident. Not that my days generally go by with any kind of excitement. I’m a sixty-five-year-old skeptic. I help around the local golf course in the summers, and dilly-dally my winters away. I have to say: the only thing I do religiously is to read the newspaper, each and every day. I can’t miss one.
This morning I woke up and turned on my coffee machine. I got the newspaper from the porch, and started my morning ritual. A blurb on the front page announced that the psychic fair was in town and that it was opening its doors at noon that day.
Confused? So was I. How could that be? The fair had started yesterday. I’d read about the woman and her three daughters dying on the first day of the psychic fair. It had to be an error. Boy, won’t someone be paying dearly for that kind of typo.
I continued reading. Nothing else caught my attention. As I was closing the paper, preparing it for the recycle box, I saw the advertisement for the fair again and decided to re-read it. As plain as day, the printed words stated that the fair started at noon.
Well then, what did I read yesterday? Maybe it said the four women were killed a day
before
the beginning of the fair, and I just missed it. That would surprise me, because I usually don’t miss those kinds of details. I distinctly remember making a comment about how they hadn’t seen it coming.
I ambled out to the garage and yanked yesterday’s paper from the recycle box. I opened it to the second page and felt my eyes bulge. My grip tightened on the edges of the newspaper. I looked left, right, up and down. I turned pages back and forth. Nowhere, in yesterday’s newspaper, was there any mention of the women who were killed.
I couldn’t believe it. I stood in my garage going over every detail. I remembered it said the fair had commenced to tragedy. Four women were killed in a freak accident that caused an explosion. Something about a transport truck losing control and hitting them, or hitting their car. The four women were the only ones in that part of the parking lot when it happened.